“Much of the world’s sorrow comes from people that are this but allow themselves to be treated as that” Maude (Harold and Maude 1971)

I couldn’t agree more Maude! We spend too much of our lives trying to mask our differences and when running a website too often we look at huge segments of traffic to a site: Organic Traffic; Paid Traffic, Social Media Traffic; Traffic from USA; Traffic from Mobile. We rarely consider how different every visitor to your site is and how different there needs are.

It’s time to recognise the unique beauty of your customers. Here are:

15 Favourite Uses of Advanced Segments

NB no website project is the same. Take this as inspiration and create your own!

1) Brand/non brand

Facebook Brand

Okay, I’m easing you in here. This is simple but absolutely essential. At very least you should be separating the keyword searches that could be attributed to brand keywords and non-brand keywords. You must look at these groups of people differently! How much business do your brand phrases generate?

2) Important Keyword groups

Again, this is the bread and butter of advanced segments. If you’re an SEO this is a must! You are likely to be focussing on a specific list of keywords. Create an advanced segment just for these. Then another for those that you aren’t directly working on but believe that your work will influence. Then another for those that you don’t think you’ll impact. Get closer to working out a proper ROI from your efforts. Your clients will appreciate greater accuracy rather than questioning the broad sweeping questionable figures you present at the moment.

3) Market segments

Can you find a list of keywords that make a market segment identifiable?

For example if you ran the iconic British store Marks and Spencer’s (a clothing shop that sells to Men and Women of all ages) then you may want to investigate how women over 45 use your site…

I would pick a range that is typically bought by this demographic such as the ‘Per Una’ range. I would find phrases include this. I would create a segment then see how this segment uses the site.

Perhaps they’ll respond well to larger font? Calls to action that remind them they will look young and sexy but classy. Images with models of a similar/ slightly younger age. Etc etc etc.

This one is shamelessly poached from the brilliant Avinash Kaushik. The future is long-tail! Generic terms with thousands upon thousands of visits are of course extremely important but often you will be able to generate far greater returns from increasing long-tail visits to your site. Set up segments for long-tail search visits and you will be able to justify your work in this area.

Are your affiliates doing the business? I recently used this to analyse the impact of having clients link back to us from their site. It was very insightful!

6) Mobile visits

How to visitors on mobile devices use your site?

This one is already set up for you. Use it! Look at how people on mobile devices use your site differently to those that are on desktop. Chances are it’ll make a good case for a mobile friendly site.

7) Social Media visits. Twitter, Facebook

Again… this is obvious right!?! Has your Social Campaign worked? I still observe that there is too much blind faith invested in in Social Media. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can track the impact of your efforts. Start with using advanced segments.

8) To learn what questions people ask to get to your site

I like this one a lot. Learn the common questions that people use to find your site. Check out this great blog for more info:

Let’s hunt for some big fish. Who are your biggest spenders and what do they do on your site? Get your average order value, say, £100. Add 50%. Create a segment for those that spend $150. Then look at how

10) Goals completed v goals not completed

mmm... interesting

See how visitors that completed a goal compare to visitors that did not complete a goal compare.

11) Remove Blog Traffic

Blog traffic can dramatically distort your stats. Be sure to look at blog and non-blog traffic differently. Expect a high bounce rate on your blog. It’s not necessarily a bad thing!

12) Bounced v Non-Bounced Visits

Take out non-bounce visitors. How does your site perform? Look at traffic sources that generated bounces… are there any killers in there?